The Guardian

She let it drop for the moment and turned to Bergman, who was nursing his coffee. “So, Dr. B, what are we looking at?”

Bergman finished his coffee and stuck the cup in a brown satchel near his leg. He shoved up the black spectacles perched on the end of his nose, then bent and picked up a shredded sports bra. “If you enjoy M. Night Shyamalan, this is all the entertainment you’ll ever want.” He held the blood-covered top by the straps. Five jagged tears scored the center of the back.

At the sight of the destroyed material, Fala felt a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach. She could imagine what the body looked like.

Winter asked, “Have any theories on how the murder was committed?”

“An animal, surely,” Bergman said.

“With big claws or teeth,” Fala added.

“A zoo animal?” Winter asked.

Joe polished off his coffee and said, “We got a guy checking to see if they have an escapee.”

Fala pointed at the three-foot patch of blood that had soaked the ground. “All the vic’s blood?”

Bergman shoved his slipping glasses back up on his nose with the inside of his forearm. “I’ve taken a sample to test against the stains on this bra. I’ll test it against a hair sample Mr. Winter retrieved from Miss Sanecki’s apartment, too.”

Winter eyed Bergman over the top of his coffee cup. “I’d be glad to run it through my own lab.”

“It’s on top of my list.” Bergman shot Winter an indignant glance for trying to step into his forensic domain.

“I’m sure Senator Kent will look favorably upon any priority you can give this case.” Winter worked a smile but it never quite touched his face. “Just give me a call when you get the results.”

Fala didn’t like the superior expression Winter wore. She glanced over at the bagged shredded panties and shorts, or what was left of them. Beside them, she noted a pair of tennis shoes, torn and shredded as if something chewed on them then spit them out. Other than the bloodstain, that was all the evidence they had.

“How much blood is that?” Fala asked.

“Best guess, about three pints,” Bergman said. “If it’s our vic’s, then it’s safe to assume she’s dead.” He dropped the tattered bra in an evidence bag.

She glanced toward the frantic dogs. They balked, shivered, and suffered fear fits as the uniforms and crime-scene techs combed the grids they had marked off. “Nothing found in the woods yet?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Bergman said.

“There’s got to be parts of the body around here…somewhere.” Joe glanced at the dogs and shrugged. “And what’s up with the damn dogs? They’ve gone loco. We’re going to have to bring in some more teams.”

Yeah, canines that couldn’t smell death and fear and something that frightened them to the point of madness. Fala looked down at the blood and another chill crawled down her neck. Then she felt Winter’s gaze on her. When she looked at him, he quickly glanced at Joe. He knew something he wasn’t saying.

Winter said, “The body could have been taken from the scene.”

Bergman gulped and said, “Or consumed.”

“One hungry creature,” she said.

Joe asked, “What kind of animal would eat a whole body?”

Bergman sneered, his usual expression while he thought. “Don’t know of any animal that eats flesh and bone in one sitting. Even lions and bears leave carcasses.”

Fala felt the predator’s aura pricking her senses, and it caused another tremor to go through her. “What about tracks?”

Bergman shook his head. “None found. That’s one of the weird things, too. There should be tracks, especially with this much blood.”

Fala knew only some supernatural beings left tracks in the physical world. She had a feeling the only track this killer had left was the energy crawling down her skin as she said, “We’ll need surveillance tapes of the park entries and exits. I want men questioning every regular night jogger.”

Joe added, “And we need background on the vic—”

“I have all the information on Ms. Sanecki’s friends and contacts in the area,” interrupted Winter. “Her family lives in Cincinnati and I have an agent on the way. I also have her BlackBerry, her itinerary for the past two days and a log of phone calls from her apartment. And I’ve requested her cell phone records.”

Fala looked askance at him. “Couldn’t get her shoe size yet?”

“Judging from what I saw, I’d say size eight.” He pointed to the jogging shoes.

Fala cursed herself for the easy set-up. Without turning toward the shoes, she said, “Asics Gel 500s, actually. She must have been a pronator.”

Joe’s cell phone rang to the tune of Brahms’s Lullaby. “Sì.” His expression darkened, his nose twitching. He slapped the phone closed and said, “All animals are accounted for at the zoo.” Before he could put his phone away it rang again. He answered, his expression quickly growing in concern. “What? Mannie, that you? Speak up!”

Fala could tell by the panic in his eyes that something was horribly wrong. Mannie, Joe’s cousin, had just joined the force. Unlucky guy had drawn the graveyard shift.

In the bright halogen lights set up around the scene, Joe’s face turned pale. He slapped the phone shut, his eyes haunted. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s going down at the station. I could barely hear Mannie.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked for a priest.”

Fala turned to Winter. She hesitated but had no choice. “Can you handle the scene alone for a while?”

“Of course.” He looked offended she’d asked such a question.

“Let’s go.” She ran behind Joe toward his car, feeling Winter’s gaze piercing her back.

“I hope everything’s okay,” Winter called to them.

A silken undertone of sincerity stirred beneath Winter’s words and caused her to turn and look at him. But his eyes said something entirely different. On the surface they glistened like pearls in a crystal glass, but deeper the transparency turned opaque, indistinct, obscuring what? A hidden agenda? Yes, she’d learn what it was.

Before she jumped in the car with Joe, the moon caught her attention. It wore the same furtive leer as Winter. Ancient Patomani legend spoke of a demon cousin to the moon, Sissong. Sometimes Sissong would come out to dance, entrance his victims, then steal their spirit and eat them. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear Sissong was hiding behind that moon. What was Winter hiding behind?

Joe had already started the engine and she hopped in the car, wondering what else could happen tonight.

Stephen listened to the dogs’ baying, whining and barking at being forced to stay near the crime scene. “Control those dogs or get them the hell out of here.” He didn’t take his eyes off of Fala Rainwater as she rode away.

“Yes, sir.” The officer snapped an order to one of the canine team members.

Stephen narrowed his eyes on the outline of Fala Rainwater’s head fading from view as the cruiser sped around a bend in the road and disappeared entirely from sight. He didn’t know what he had expected at his first up-close-and-personal meeting with Fala Rainwater, but it wasn’t the physical shock he’d experienced at touching her. He’d grown instantly aware of her power. It had been almost painful as she had prodded his spirit, trying to break through the magic shield cloaking him. She was so powerful he’d felt her energy crackling all over him, and he’d found himself fantasizing about his tongue and the dimple that hollowed the middle of her square-jawed chin. And those raven brows that shadowed periwinkle eyes. The blue glowed with an inner flame, and he had found himself being drawn to that flame like a moth to its death. For a moment he had thought the dark magic wouldn’t be strong enough and she might discover just what he was. He couldn’t let that happen yet, or his plans would be in ruin.

Yes, his destiny and her destiny were linked now, and there was no turning back. He walked toward the medical examiner, who was still working the scene and heard the polystyrene coffee cup crunch eerily beneath his shoe. It sounded like tiny screams in the heavy, damp stillness of the night.

Chapter 3

Fala ran up the front steps of the Twenty-first Precinct. The brick Greco-Roman building had housed the Twenty-first for over a century. It still stood like a bastion of strength in the middle of a block of restaurants and small businesses. Light poured out through the windows of the precinct doors, cutting a jagged edge across the dark steps. Joe had dropped her off and driven around back to cover the rear.

Colt drawn, she crept up to the doors and glanced inside at the main hallway and front desk. No one in sight. Definitely odd. The small police station fortified the heart of the District, and it hummed with activity round the clock—especially on full-moon nights.

Fala eased open one of the doors and slipped through. Dead silence engulfed her. It blanketed the normally buzzing front desk. A cup of coffee sat on the counter, steam spiraling up from it like a ghost in the air. Computer screens hummed on the desks behind the front reception area.

Someone got an email; “You’ve got mail” pinged in the silence.

Somewhere a radio squawked for a dispatcher. She noticed the benches in Processing sat empty; no criminals handcuffed, waiting to be booked. No lawyers or bail bondsmen. No hookers. It was like being thrown onto the set of 28 Days Later.

She walked past the desk and sniffed the air. Her keen senses detected the metallic scent of human blood. Then the supernatural vibrations struck her with such force it felt like she’d walked into a hive of hornets, a very large one. The same eerie, negative energy as at the park.

She bent and touched the floor. The trail of energy was fresh, the underworld darkness in it palpable. Evil vibrated through it. Her hand began to tremble, her fingers on fire from the dark magic. She jerked her arm back and stood, gripping her .45. Adrenaline raced through her. Her own heartbeat pounded in her ears. And she heard her grandmother’s warning: Be on your guard. Had she brought this evil to the station? A sick, guilt-ridden feeling swirled in her gut. Was anyone left alive here?

Her stomach clenched hard at the thought, then she felt the amulet vibrating against her skin.

Tumseneha was here.

Had he come for her? All the horrible images of him from her numerous nightmares flashed in her mind: a shifting, faceless shadow that fed off fear, a beast with four heads and fanged teeth; the one she dreaded the most was the normal male faces. He had sneaked up on her in those dreams, stepped out of crowds to grab her by the neck or plunge a knife in her back. He was, after all, a shape-shifter, and unlike her he could change his physical appearance into anything his heart desired. Her white magic was limited only to the bear totem. What form had he assumed at the park when he’d killed the girl? Was it the same one at the station now? She recalled the missing girl’s body and shuddered.

A crash sounded in Processing. Screams followed. At least people were alive.

A growl rumbled through the station, so menacing and so guttural it vibrated along her nerves. She had heard the howl of many beasts, natural and supernatural, but never one that sent dread through every nerve in her body like this one.

She crept down the hall, her temples throbbing, a knot in her throat.

As she drew closer to Processing, she saw the five-hundred-pound solid metal door, ripped clean from its hinges, the edge of it sticking out through the jamb. It was one of those “proof” doors, bulletproof, atomic-bomb proof, 9/11-afterthought proof. Too bad it wasn’t evil-sorcerer proof.

She paused at the glass windows that ran along the wall separating Processing from the hallway. Her keen senses detected the sporadic thumping of human hearts inside, their fear jack hammering the air.

Another crash and more shrieks as she peeked inside.

Utter chaos. Desk and filing cabinets overturned. Civilians, cops and what looked like everyone in the building had hit the floor, some pretending death, some not pretending. Mannie was among them, pinned beneath an overturned desk, his cell phone still in hand. She zeroed in on his heartbeat. Still alive, but barely. Tumseneha had attacked him with ruthless accuracy.

At the front of the room she spotted Detective Brower cornered by a lycanthrope. A werewolf, a ravehai in Patomani lingo. And right now this thing conjured from the underworld’s darkest reaches looked like the embodiment of pure brute force and viciousness. Sinewy strength bulged from its muscles. Gray, matted hair covered its body. Five-inch claws curled along its gnarled half-human, half-wolf hands. She could see the life-force aura the beast emitted, a nexus of pulsing, deep burgundy and black demon light.

Hollywood had perpetrated a lot of contemporary myths regarding werewolves. The one that angered Fala the most was that werewolves didn’t know they were killing while in wolf form. Heck, yeah, they knew what they were doing. They reveled in carnage.

The whole biting thing and silver-bullet hoax were just as laughable. Werewolves didn’t just walk the earth, biting and propagating its kind. They had to be conjured from the underworld like any parasitic demon that inhabited human bodies. A sorcerer powerful enough to call forth a werewolf spirit was also powerful enough to control it and protect it. Killing the host human never destroyed it, and an innocent life was always lost in the process. But the werewolf spirit could always slip into another human until the cycle was broken, either by destroying its master or by an incantation that could command it to leave the human vessel and return to the underworld, to await another resurrection. Fala had lost count of the number of werewolf spirits she’d dispatched to hell. So much for getting the facts straight.

The difference here was Tumseneha had not only conjured this lycanthropic spirit but also inhabited the human form it infected. Two puppets for the price of one body. Not bad change. He couldn’t have chosen a more fearsome creature to attack the station, she’d give him that.

Brower was a giant of a man, all of six-five, but the werewolf dwarfed him. Blood and spittle dripped from its huge mouth and long fangs as it backed Brower deeper into the corner.

Fala had never seen Brower afraid before, and what she saw now was way beyond fear. Tears streamed down his square face, but he seemed unaware of them. He wore a crazed look of disbelief as he stared into the lycanthrope’s red, glowing eyes. Brower had wet his pants. He trembled all over, stumbling backward. The first sighting of a werewolf tended to make people a little nuts.

Fala went to tap the barrel of her .45 against the glass and draw the werewolf’s attention away from Brower, but no need. The creature sensed her and turned.

Their gazes locked.

Cruel eyes narrowed slightly in recognition, as if he were sensing a target. The medallion throbbed and burned between her breasts like a divining rod, almost branding her chest. She could feel the world of opposites colliding within her, Tumseneha’s red underworld power writhing behind the werewolf face, coiling to extinguish her white-blue magic flames. His power was so strong it made her head throb, and her skin felt as if it were being peeled from her body.

You are mine. I have marked you, Tsimshian. You and all your kind will die by my hand. Tumseneha’s voice pounded in her head, the same voice from her nightmares.

We shall see, won’t we? Her heart banged her ribs, years of fearing this confrontation converging on her like a downpour.

I have already won…

Not while I’m still alive, she answered with more bravado than she felt. And like the coward you are, you’ve chosen to prey on weak mortals. Let’s see how well you do against an equal.

I’ll destroy—

Fala grabbed the amulet and meditated on an image of the Maiden Bear, clouding her mind to his words. White magic flashed from her core and burst from her body, jettisoning his thought transference out of her consciousness. She felt the aftershocks of his cloying essence leave her. Her mind grew suddenly clear, as if someone had wiped a slate clean. The amulet pulsed in her hand, energy still throbbing from the ancient metal, its heat comforting her skin. She hadn’t been prepared for the power of the amulet and how it enhanced her own. But damn, it sure felt good.

She waited until he sprang through the doorway. His werewolf-form moved toward her with stalking, effortless grace, muscles pumping beneath a pelt of fur, eyes never leaving her.

She ran for the front doors. She had to lure him outside, away from these people so she could fight him.

“Duck, Fala.” Joe’s voice came from behind her.

“No, Joe!”

Gunfire opened up.

She wheeled as Tumseneha leaped on Joe, his bullets doing nothing but angering the beast inside him.

Tumseneha bit and clawed and threw Joe against the wall like a rag doll. Joe didn’t have a chance. Fala saw the creature’s maw open in preparation to lunge at Joe’s throat for the coup de grâce.

“Hey, coward, remember me?” she screamed.

The scream caught his attention. He dropped Joe’s limp body to the floor, then prowled toward Fala.

She emptied her clip into his chest.

The bullets only stopped him for a beat, then he recovered and took his time, licking Joe’s blood from his mouth, slowly, gloatingly, as if he were pleased that he had her right where he wanted her.

“That’s right, outside. Just you and me.” Emotion cracked in Fala’s voice as she struggled to keep her mind on staying alive and not on Joe’s fate. She backed toward the front doors, her eyes never leaving Tumseneha’s werewolf face.

Suddenly the SWAT team burst through the front doors, knocking her out of the way.

She cursed and hit the ground, covering her head.

“What the hell is that?” one of the team members yelled.

“Damned if I know.”

Their M-16s sprayed bullets at the lycanthrope. It sounded like the practice range at the academy, the reports deafening her.

Fala lifted her head enough to peer over her arm. Tumseneha staggered from the overwhelming rounds of lead hitting him, but Fala knew this was only a temporary obstacle.

His scarlet, burning eyes found her; a final farewell that made her skin crawl, then he turned and bolted for the fire escape. “Get it!”

The SWAT team sped past her.

“Don’t get too close,” she yelled after them, and hoped they listened.

She leaped to her feet and glanced at the stairwell door, then at Joe. Help Joe? Or go after Tumseneha? The SWAT team at least had him on the run. She felt certain they had enough firepower between them to stay safe, so she ran to Joe’s side.

Blood covered him. He’d been bitten in the shoulder, neck, side and thigh. She could hear his heart, weak, thready, barely discernible to her hypersensitive ears. Any moment she’d lose him.

“No, Joe. Stay with me.” She grabbed his arms, glanced up the hall and made sure no one saw her, then she pulled him into the fire escape.

He couldn’t die. He was family. The closest thing she’d ever have to a brother. Tumseneha couldn’t steal Joe’s life. She wouldn’t let it happen. She knew there were consequences for interfering with fate, but she wasn’t going to let Joe die at the hands of her enemy.

She rolled Joe on his side, then laid down next to him, spooning her body tight to his. His small-boned physique was a head shorter than hers, and she easily covered the length of him. His wife’s perfume still clung to his shirt from where Camilla had kissed him goodbye; it mingled with the scent of the new baby and the sweet metallic odor of his own blood.

“You’re gonna raise Josephine. Hear me? You’re gonna be okay,” she spoke in Patomani.

She chanted softly in his ear, invoking the power of the bear. She felt it rising from within her, building inside her. A spiritual current coursed through her veins, and it took all of her self-control to harness it. Her whole body burned as energy flowed into her arms and legs, into her center. She rolled Joe on his back and kissed him, opening her mouth and exhaling a ball of writhing power into his lungs.

His spine buckled as if he’d just been electrocuted. Their bodies melded into one and she went inside him, her spirit pushing at the male boundaries of his body, searing its way through him. She could feel the healing energy fusing together the torn, bitten flesh, regenerating new skin and muscle, starting his heart again.

Her power reached its zenith and she inhaled the healing energy back into her own body.

For a moment she couldn’t move. Once the life force left her body, she was vulnerable until it fully returned. After a moment, she looked down at Joe. Blood had burned away from the healed wounds. His color brightened and he breathed normally again.

“You’re fine now.” She chanted an ancient spell in his ear that would take away his memory of what had happened, but parts of his subconscious would still leak it into his dreams. Some things her magic couldn’t totally cleanse; the human mind was one of them.

She held him until his body relaxed, then she rolled him on his side.

He lay there, calm, still, looking as if he were napping. The torn places in his shirt couldn’t be helped. She could repair living flesh, but forget synthetic material.

Fala felt her body still humming from the healing exchange. Energy sizzled along her skin, raised the hairs at the back of her neck. Current crackled in her hair, and her braid clung to her sweater. The transfer had popped off the buttons on her leather jacket, and she scrambled to pick them up. Sirens sounded in the distance—a lot of them.

The door flew open and Brower almost tripped over her and Joe. The big guy looked as if he’d been running from an earthquake and the earth had opened up directly in front of him. He stood there, trembling, staring down at Fala, then Joe. The cloud of fear melted from his eyes and he realized Joe was lying in the stairwell.

“Sorry, I, uh— What happened to him?” Brower pointed a beefy finger at Joe.

Fala stood up. “He had a run-in with a wild dog.”

Brower’s forehead wrinkled on his bulldog face. “That was no freakin’ wild dog, Fala. Good God, if you could see what it did…” His words trailed off as if he were remembering the attack. He glanced down at the dark urine spot on his pants. He grew self-conscious and turned sideways out of Fala’s direct view.

“I saw.” Fala heard the sirens surround the building. “The cavalry has arrived. You’ve got to get yourself together.”

“I’m trying.” He gripped his fists to make them stop shaking.

“The captain is going to be down our throats for letting an animal overtake the station.”

“What could we do?” Brower shrugged his tree-trunk-size shoulders. “It took us by surprise. Bullets didn’t stop it.”

“Save that one for Internal Affairs and the tabloids.”

Brower shook his square head like a lost bull. “You’re right. No one will ever believe that story. But that thing, that god-awful thing.” His face twisted. “It tore people apart. I just let that thing back me into a corner. If you hadn’t lured it away from me…” His voice broke with self-recrimination.

Fala couldn’t help but feel pity for him. A full frontal with a demon wolf would give anyone nightmares for years. She knew from experience. She’d faced her first one at twelve and had bite marks on her right thigh to prove it. “You were traumatized,” she said. “No one saw what happened in there but you and me. Let’s stick to the story of a rabid animal.”

“I don’t know.” He rubbed his wide forehead with indecision.

She could tell him the truth that the werewolf was an evil sorcerer who was trying to kill her before she became the Guardian. Nope, that would blow his mind. And she couldn’t trust anyone with the truth about being a shape-shifter. Heck, it would be easier just to erase his memory of Tumseneha’s attack. It wouldn’t be the first human memory she’d erased.